Wednesday, March 23, 2011

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry

"I prefer dangerous liberty to peaceful servitude.... Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.... The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.... When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.” -- Thomas Jefferson

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.” -- George Washington

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, may your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were ever our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." -- Thomas Paine

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." -- Thomas Paine

"Sad will be the day when the American People forget their history, and no longer remember that the Country they love, the institutions they cherish, and the freedom they hope to preserve, were born from the throes of armed resistance to tyranny, and nursed in the rugged arms of fearless men." -- Roger Sherman, Declaration Signer from Connecticut

"Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors." -- Abigail Adams

"Let us have faith that right makes might..." -- Abraham Lincoln

"Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight.... The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared." -- General George Patton

“I am terrified. But Toni and I do not care to live without the freedom to think and act. We will not follow blindly nor live in fear. No. Not ever. I cannot stand by in safety while other decent people confront evil. I cannot hold convictions without acting upon them. To do nothing is not an option because I won’t like myself then. I have to help expose and stop the evildoers.” -- Alisa Connor from Reason Reigns, my first novel

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us to tamely surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." -- Thomas Jefferson

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Government-Goliath: Practice what you preach. Stop bullying the private sector. End economic regulations and regulatory bodies. End your intervention in ALL non-force realms. Honor the Declaration of Independence: Your ONLY purpose is “to secure these rights” – equal inherent inalienable rights.

"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others."

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest."

"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."

- Thomas Jefferson

At the war's end in 1783, he took affrontWhen asked to be king, to wear a crown.George Washington replied, “Abhorrent!” Power-lust is for little fiends.A moral man does not rule, Nor can he be ruled by men.

“God is all-good and all-loving. He is not a sadist. Neither is He malevolent nor whimsical. He is just, firm, and steadfast. His creations share the same attributes: nature is governed by laws that are unchanging.

Every creation of God has an identity that was, is, will always be, and had to be. Whether a man’s understanding of nature is real or not, true or false, right or wrong, depends on its correspondence to a thing’s identity.

God is so benevolent that the laws of nature are absolute. They are not subject to change by time, whims, nor even by prayers. They are not open to anyone’s choice. They remain constant to the good as well as to evil.

God is so just that the laws of nature are knowable by every man. They are not revelations arbitrarily disclosed to a favored few. God is so loving that He has gifted man with the faculties to understand nature.

Every man who chooses to use God’s endowments reaps benefits. Those who do not, constantly fear the unknown; they follow, copy, or repeat mindlessly. In the face of alternatives, they are never certain whom to imitate or what to borrow. They might choose to rule those who do use their minds, by force, or by the thinkers’ overly generous goodwill or unearned guilt.

It is necessary to build defensive structures against those who might use force.”

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Founders are the proof that reason and faith can coexist, parallel to each other, in the same man. Like them, their moral descendants revere reason, freedom, and happiness....

Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Teenage Q&A show frequently invited Apollo Marianto. An eighteen-year-old boy from the audience asked, “Mr. Marianto, could we have a youngsters-friendly, rapid-fire Q&A about political principles?”

“Individual Rights?”“Live and let live. Thou shall not coerce. A right is an action that can be exercised without anyone’s permission, limited only by the equal right of others.”

“Capitalism?”“Mind your own business. Good work is the key to good fortune. The wall of separation between force and economics.”

“Socialism?”“Babysitting adults by force. Legalization of robbery.”

“Mixed economy?”“Clean water with drops of poison. A mixture of freedom and controls devoid of principles.”

“Antitrust Laws?”“Russian roulette with the government holding the gun to every businessman’s head. Government-mined fields traversed by businessmen. Brazenly anti-logic.”

“Regulations?”“Shackles for wealth and job creators.”

“Profit?”“To the irrational: damn if you do; damn if you don’t. Greed if you profit; greed if you don’t.”

“Do good by force?”“What President George Washington called ‘Abhorrent!’. The power-luster’s subterfuge. Absolving the lazy from the necessity of thinking.”

“Coercion?”“Military draft. Taxation. Government as CEO of the economy. The breach of the wall of separation between government and any non-force realm like religion or the economy.”

“Centrist?”“Too lazy or cowardly to take up a position. Revels in contradictions. Relativist.”

“Extremist?”“A pragmatist’s description of one who has integrity.”

“Pragmatist?”“Anti-reality. Anti-reason. One who blanks out the past, the future, the whys, the wherefores, and the hows.”

“Lobbying?”“Courting crooks.”

“Dirty Politicians?”“Power-hungry. Tax-guzzlers.”

“Freedom?”“Coercion-free existence. The wall of separation between government, the entity that holds the monopoly on legal coercive power, and all non-force realms.”

"We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government."

Facebook Badge

Best premises and good fortune!

Reason Reigns and Royal Serf - A Hearing

“It’s not criminals who provoke great hatred, it’s honest men.” The words of a polymath and polyglot executed by tyrants at age 35: Dr. Jose Rizal.

Honesty is fidelity to the truth. The truth is what conforms to reality. Integrity is fidelity to logic. It is the refusal to hold contradictions; it is the consistent cohesion of words and deeds; it is honoring one’s mental creations by giving them physical existence.

I hold that the honest would accord my novels, Reason Reigns and Royal Serf, a hearing. I expect hatred from the moral descendants of the executioners of Dr. Rizal and the persecutors of Galileo, and from the enemies of the principle of individual liberty. They destroy rather than stand the test of truth and reason.

Reason Reigns extols independent thinkers, and Royal Serf honors the Declaration of Independence. These novels proclaim that the right to the pursuit of happiness is the right to selfishness.

Royal Serf’s Apollo says: “One not concerned with oneself has no desire to live. The concept of one’s concern for oneself, represented by the word selfishness, has been twisted to mean malevolence towards others. Those who desire to live but accept the twisted meaning of selfishness unwittingly facilitate insidious destroyers. Unable to rule nor influence individuals who accept no guilt in their desire to live and pursue happiness, destroyers demonize their core by associating callousness and malevolence with selfishness.”

Apollo responds to this request from an interviewer: “Use major swindler Bernard Madoff to contrast a selfish man with a selfless man.” -

“The basic selfishness criteria are self-preservation and self-reliance followed by self-love and self-respect. Bernard Madoff is not self-reliant. A dependent, he fed off his victims. Unmindful of losing his liberty, he committed massive fraud. Self-preservation is clearly absent – Madoff does not value himself. He fails even the basic selfishness test. Madoff is selfless.”

Selfless means no self: no self-esteem, no self-respect, no self-love.

The sixteenth amendment, a stick-up of hard-earned wages, tramples on the Declaration of Independence and incinerates property rights. The Antitrust Law spits on logic, puffing up that free competition must be enforced! Undefined, flexible, contradictory laws are hailed. Sacrifice is the Holy Grail. Selfishness is trumpeted as having horns, a pointed tail, and a pitchfork.

Honesty demands that one’s soul be put on trial: The advocacy or sanction of coercion is the mark of evil. Integrity must be summoned to reclaim the Declaration of Independence from the clutches of sacrifice glorifiers.